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Earlier this month we learned the name of a second person who stole top secret documents from the US National Security Agency (NSA). After Edward Snowden admitted doing so publicly in June 2013, the FBI has now arrested the 51-year old Harold T. Martin III at his home in Maryland.

Martin hoarded lots of classified documents, not only from NSA but also from a number of other military and intelligence agencies. The FBI is still comparing them with those from the recent Shadow Brokers leak and a range of other NSA leaks from the past few years, but given what’s known now, it seems likely that at least one other leaker is still at large.

The New York Times reported that when the FBI raided Martin’s house on August 27, they found paper documents and many terabytes of highly classified information, even going back the 1990s. At least six documents were from 2014. It was reported that Martin first took the classified documents on paper, later on CDs and more recently on thumb drives.

The reason why Harold Martin brought home and stored such large numbers of top secret documents isn’t yet clarified. One suggestion is that he may have used them forresearch for his dissertation about “new methods for remote analysis of heterogeneous & cloud computing architectures”, which he was working on at the University of Maryland.

Documents from multiple agencies

It should be noted that not everything Martin stole comes from NSA. In the official charges there are no names of the agencies where the documents come from, they are only described as highly classified, including ones that are marked as Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI).

With the documents going back to the 1990s, he may well have started hoarding them from the places where he worked in those days. From 1987 to 2000, Martin served at the US Navy, achieving the rank of lieutenant, but he left active duty in 1992.

As the Washington Post found out, he then took a variety of tech jobs with government contractors, like at Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) somewhere in the 1990s and later, until 2009, at Tenacity Solutions, for which he worked at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

In 2009, Harold Martin started to work for Booz Allen Hamilton, for which he was a contractor at NSA from 2012 to 2015, when Booz transferred him to the Pentagon’s Office of Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L), which is responsible for often highly sensitive and classified procurement programs. There he stayed until the moment of his arrest last August.

Officials have meanwhile said that Martin took classified documents not only from NSA, but also from his other workplaces, including ODNI and AT&L.

It’s interesting as well that in the charges against Martin, a whole paragraph is dedicated to the at least six documents from 2014, which are described as being produced “through sensitive government sources, methods, and capabilities”. As signals intelligence is traditionally seen as the most sensitive capability, maybe just these six documents are from NSA.

The building of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
where Harold Martin worked as a contractor before 2009(photo: Microsoft, via Cryptome.org – click to enlarge)

Shadow Brokers investigation

After the “Shadow Brokers” disclosed a large set of secret NSA hacking tools last August, the FBI began investigating this leak. At the same time there was a lot of speculation: was NSA hacked from the outside? Had an NSA hacker been sloppy? Were the tools leaked by an insider? Maybe the same insider responsible for earlier leaks that hadn’t been attributed to Snowden?

On September 22, it was reported that during the FBI investigation, NSA officials had said that a former agency operative had carelessly left the hacking tool files available on a remote computer, where Russian hackers found them. If that’s correct, then it seems likely that the FBI traced Harold Martin when they were looking for that careless NSA hacker. It has not yet been confirmed that Martin was that person though.

Harold Martin was working at NSA’s hacking division TAO around the time when the tools were considered to be left exposed, somewhere after October 18, 2013, but a former TAO hacker told the Washington Post that Martin “worked in the unit’s front office carrying out support roles such as setting up accounts, not conducting actual operations.”

Even if Martin was the man who left the hacking tools exposed, then we still don’t know who found them and published them under the name Shadow Brokers. It’s not very likely that this was done by Martin himself, as Shadow Brokers published additional messages on August 28, October 1 and October 15, when he was already in custody. The actual publication can therefore be the work of for example Russian, Iranian or North Korean hackers or even independent hacktivists.

Other sources?

Could Harold Martin also be the source of earlier leaks, that were not attributed to Edward Snowden? In theory he could have been that “second source” next to Snowden: none of these other leaked documents (like the TAO catalog, XKEYSCORE code, tasking lists and end reports) are newer than 2015, when Martin left NSA. Contrary to this Martin is described as very patriotic, which doesn’t fit the fact that these particular leaks were clearly meant to harm and embarrass the US and NSA.

Also, Martin hasn’t (yet) been charged with espionage or the attempt to provide classified information to a third party or a foreign government – which doesn’t seem something the US government would leave out or keep secret after the recent and unprecedented statement in which the Office of the Director of National Intelligence accused Russia of hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other political organizations.

Should the FBI investigation confirm that Harold Martin was only responsible for leaking the NSA hacking tools (after which unknown others published them) and that none of his documents were provided to foreign intelligence agencies or showed up in the earlier revelations, then there’s most likely yet another leaker from inside NSA.

The Shadow Brokers leak standing alone and not related to the earlier non-Snowden leaks is of some importance, because only among the stuff published by the Shadow Brokers there are files with a date (October 18, 2013) after the day that Snowden left NSA (May 20, 2013).

This means that when Harold Martin is the initial source of the Shadow Brokers files, we can no longer exclude the possibility that the earlier leaks do come from the Snowden trove. If that would be the case, then someone with access to them went rogue and had them published on his own account. But it should also be noted that both Glenn Greenwald and Bruce Schneier explicitly said that some of these leaked documents did not come from Snowden.

The more likely option is therefore that there’s still another leaker at large, someone with a more evil intent than Harold Martin and Edward Snowden – a conclusion which is not very comforting and which also raises questions about NSA’s internal security…

The NSA’s hacking division TAO, where Harold Martin worked for some time, isapparently not located in the well-known NSA headquarters building at Fort Meade, but in one or more leased office buildings outside, one of them at an office complex calledFriendship Annex (FANX) near Baltimore. TAO also has units at NSA’s four Cryptologic Centers across the US.

Entrance to the highly secured TAO headquarters building is strictly controlled: one has to go through an imposing steel door, protected by armed guards, and entrance is only possible after entering a six-digit code and passing a retinal scanner to ensure that only specially cleared individuals are allowed in.

Such security measures are more aimed at keeping outsiders out, than at insiders in. And when it comes to finding inside moles of hostile foreign intelligence agencies, the NSA is also said to have a rather bad track record. The Manning and Snowden leaks made NSA painfully aware of this and so preventive insider-threat detection programs were put in place.

It’s not clear whether these new systems failed in the case of Harold Martin, or that they simply weren’t yet implemented at the TAO location where he worked – anti-leak software that was designed by Raytheon to “spot attempts by unauthorized people to access or download data” was also not yet installed at the NSA facility in Hawaii when Snowden was working there.

Tracking what employees are doing inside is one thing, checking what they take out is another. But according to The Washington Post, the NSA (like other agencies) does notimpose universal checks of personnel and their belongings as they enter and leave agency buildings. Security guards only conduct random checks and use their discretion in order to keep en build the trust of the employees.

“If you have a bag full of stuff, you’re probably going to get stopped” said a former TAO operator to the Post, but, in general, “Disneyland has more physical security checks than we had”. Additionally, NSA facilities will have detection gates, but it seems that it was easier for Snowden to walk out with his thousands of documents than many would have thought.

As former NSA general counsel Rajesh De explained, it is unlikely “you’re going to be able to stop every incident of somebody taking documents if they’re determined to do so. But the real question is how quickly can you detect it, how quickly can you mitigate the harm of any such incident.”

An old sign inside the NSA headquarters building
showing what kind of items are not allowed in.(screenshot from a documentary about NSA)

Conclusion

Harold Martin stole a lot of classified documents from multiple military and intelligence agencies where he worked over the past 20 years, with maybe just a small number from NSA. The still ongoing FBI investigation has to make clear whether Martin was responsible for exposing the TAO hacking tools.

If not, then there has to be yet another careless NSA employee, but then it’s also still possible that the hacking tools came from a source responsible for a range of earlier leaks. So far it seems that Martin isn’t the source of those earlier leaks, which means that the so-called “second source” is still at large.

The case of Harold Martin also made clear that security measures at NSA, and other US agencies, were not as strict and tight as outsiders would have expected: even for someone without a strong ideological or financial drive like Martin it was apparently not that difficult to regularly walk out with top secret documents.

Many things have not yet been confirmed or clarified, but at least the Shadow Brokers leak and the subsquent arrest of Harold Martin created more awareness among the American public of the fact that there have been more leaks than just those from Snowden.

In August 2014, Bruce Schneier was probably one of the first who identified a second and a third leaker besides Snowden. Many more similar leaks followed and a full listof them was compiled on this weblog in December 2015 (still being updated). As an excerpt of this listing, a short overview of the most important non-Snowden leaks was published in The New York Times last week.

UPDATE:
Shortly after this blog posting was published, The New York Times came with a new report saying that the volume of classified documents Harold Martin had in his possesion is larger than those stolen by Edward Snowden and even than those of the Panama Papers from 2015.
FBI investigators apparently also found that the TAO hacking tools were among Martin’s documents, but because he is not very cooperative, it is still not clear how they came in the hands of the mysterious Shadow Brokers, who subsequently published them. So far there’s no evidence that Martin was hacked or that he sold information.
He seems to have hoarded all these documents in order to get better at his job, as he is described as someone who imagined himself a top spy and an important player in the world of digital espionage.

On Thursday, October 20, government lawyers said they would prosecute Harold Martin under the Espionage Act because of stealing classified information. The FBI found the huge amount of 50 terabytes of data at his home, but it is not yet clear how much of that is classified. Also foundwere “hard-copy documents that were seized from various locations during the search that comprise six full bankers’ boxes worth of documents” with “Many of the documents marked ‘Secret’ and ‘Top Secret,’ also bear special handling caveats. The information stolen by the Defendant also appears to include the personal information of government employees”.

The mega-rich use complex offshore structures to own mansions, yachts, art masterpieces and other assets, gaining tax advantages and anonymity not available to average people.

Many of the world’s top’s banks – including UBS, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank – have aggressively worked to provide their customers with secrecy-cloaked companies in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore hideaways.

A well-paid industry of accountants, middlemen and other operatives has helped offshore patrons shroud their identities and business interests, providing shelter in many cases to money laundering or other misconduct.

Ponzi schemers and other large-scale fraudsters routinely use offshore havens to pull off their shell games and move their ill-gotten gains.

KNOW MORE

A cache of leaked documents provides names of politicians and others linked to more than 175,000 Bahamian companies registered between 1990 and 2016

For years, Neelie Kroes traveled Europe as one of the continent’s senior officials, warning big corporations that they couldn’t “run away” from the European Union’s rules. The Dutch politician sympathized with average citizens who worried they’d been left to pay the bills “as infringers cream off the extra profits.”

As the EU’s commissioner for competition policy from 2004 until 2010, she was Europe’s top corporate enforcer and madeForbes magazine’s annual list of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” five times.

What Kroes never told audiences – and didn’t tell European Commission officials in mandatory disclosures – was that she had been listed as a director of an offshore company in the Bahamas, the Caribbean tax haven whose secrecy and tax structures have attracted multinational companies and criminals alike.

Kroes was listed as director of a Bahamian company from 2000 to 2009, according to documents reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Kroes, through a lawyer, told ICIJ and media partners that she did not declare her directorship of the company because it was never operational. Kroes’ lawyer blamed her appearance on company records as “a clerical oversight which was not corrected until 2009.” Her lawyer said the company, set up through a Jordanian businessman and friend of Kroes, had been created to investigate the possibility of raising money to purchase assets – worth more than $6 billion – from Enron Corp., the American energy giant. The deal never came off, and Enron later collapsed amid a massive accounting scandal.

Emily O’Reilly, the European Ombudsman with powers to investigate alleged breaches of EU rules and procedures, did not comment on the Kroes’ case but said: “When the rules are breached, whether accidentally or otherwise, the negative impression it leaves with the public tends to resonate more strongly than any positive counter steps subsequently undertaken.”

Details of Kroes’ link to the offshore company are among the revelations found in a new leak of documents, received by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with ICIJ, that disclose details behind companies incorporated in the Bahamas. The cache of 1.3 million files from the island nation’s corporate registry provides names of directors and some owners of more than 175,000 Bahamian companies, trusts and foundations registered between 1990 and early 2016.

Today ICIJ, Süddeutsche Zeitung and other media partners are making this informationavailable to the public. This creates, for the first time, a free, online and publicly-searchable database of offshore companies set up in the Bahamas. This information has been combined with data from the Panama Papers and other leaked offshore documents to add additional heft to one of the largest public databases of offshore entities in history.

Former EU commissioner Neelie Kroes. Photo: AP Photo/Geert Vanden WijngaertThe new information reveals previously unknown or little-reported connections to companies owned or run by current or former politicians from the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

In the Bahamas’ capital, Nassau, company documents can be consulted in person. An online registry, in theory, serves the same purpose. Yet the information in the online registry maintained by the Bahamian government is often incomplete. In addition, retrieving one company’s documents will cost at least $10, in conflict with the recommendation of the international association of company registries, which discourages search fees.

The data released today involve the basic building blocks of offshore companies: a company’s name, its date of creation, the physical and mailing address in the Bahamas and, in some cases, the company’s directors. At a basic level, this information is crucial to day-to-day commerce. In other cases, police, detectives and fraud investigators use registries as starting points on the trail of wrongdoing.

“Corporate registries are incredibly important,” said Debra LaPrevotte, a former U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent whose work included tracing billions of dollars in bribes and corruption proceeds hidden in tax havens for politicians from Ukraine, Nigeria and Bangladesh. “Offshore companies are often used as intermediaries to facilitate money laundering and, frequently, the companies are only used to open bank accounts, thus the corporate registry documents, which might identify the beneficial owners, are part of the evidence.”

Fresh insights

Unlike the Panama Papers, 11.5 million often-detailed emails, contracts, audio recordings and other documents from one law firm, the information listed in the new Bahamian documents is plainer — if still fundamental — in content. The new data does not make it clear, for example, whether directors named in connection with a Bahamian firm truly control the company or act as nominees, employees-for-hire who serve as the face of the company but have no involvement in its operations.

When paired with the Panama Papers, the Bahamas data provide fresh insights into the offshore dealings of politicians, criminals and executives as well as the bankers and lawyers who help move money.

The new leaked documents include the names of 539 registered agents— corporate middlemen who serve as intermediaries between Bahamian authorities and customers who wish to create an offshore company. Among them is Mossack Fonseca, the law firm whose leaked files formed the basis of the Panama Papers. The firm set up 15,915 entities in the Bahamas, making it Mossack Fonseca’s third busiest jurisdiction. At one point, Bahamian companies were among Mossack Fonseca’s best-sellers.

A police officer outside Mossack Fonseca’s Panama City office. Photo: AP Photo/Arnulfo FrancoThe Panama Papers show how Mossack Fonseca helped clients use Bahamian secrecy to keep their name out of public filings and how the law firm undermined the global push towards tax transparency.

Beyond Mossack Fonseca and the Panama Papers, the leaked Bahamian files reveal details of the offshore activities of prime ministers, cabinet ministers, princes and convicted felons. It is generally not illegal to own or direct an offshore company, and there are legitimate business reasons in many cases for setting up an offshore structure. But transparency experts say it’s important that public officials disclose their connections to offshore entities.

The political and government figures named in the leaked documents include Colombia’s minister of mines and energy between 1999 and 2001, Carlos Caballero Argáez. He was listed as president and secretary of a Bahamian company, Pavc Properties Inc., between 1997 and 2008. Caballero Argáez also appeared as director of Norway Inc., a company registered in the Bahamas between 1990 and 2015.

Argáez told ICIJ that Norway Inc. held a Miami bank account owned by his father. The account’s assets were distributed to his sons upon his death, Argáez said. Pavc Properties owned an apartment in Miami, Argáez said, and his relationship with the company ended in 2008, when he sold his shares. Argáez said he and others chose the Bahamas on lawyers’ advice. He denied any conflict of interest. He said the company was set in the Bahamas for “tax purposes.”

In the case of Kroes, the former senior EU official, the records show that she was director of Mint Holdings Ltd from July 2000 to October 2009. The company was registered in the Bahamas in April 2000 and is currently active.

In response to questions from ICIJ, the Guardian and Dutch newspapers Trouw and Het Financieele Dagblad, Kroes acknowledged that she did not disclose her connection to this company in her declarations of personal financial interests when she first became competition commissioner in 2004 or in later declarations as she continued serving as a high-level EU official.

Kroes served as competition commissioner from November 2004 to February 2010 and as digital commissioner from February 2010 to November 2014.

EU rules require that European commissioners declare all their economic interests in the previous 10 years, including governing, supervisory and advisory positions in companies devoted to commercial and economic activities.

Mint Holdings’ other directors included Jordanian businessman Amin Badr-El-Din. Badr-El-Din was still listed as holding that position in documents from July 2015. The Bahamas online corporate registry does not list the company’s directors.

Click to explore the Offshore Leaks Database.Badr-El-Din founded UAE Offsets Group, a company that reinvests proceeds from weapons sales into the United Arab Emirates. UAE Offsets Group previously contracted with the weapons manufacturing giant Lockheed Martin Corp. Kroes worked as a lobbyist for Lockheed prior to being named EU competition commissioner.

When she was appointed EU competition commissioner, Kroes placed her money in a blind trust and promised to avoid adjudicating on companies with which she had a connection. While her opponents worried that she might be soft on the business world, Kroes earned the nickname “Steely Neelie” as she imposed record fines on companies that fixed prices and organized unfair monopolies.

Since stepping away from her EU positions, however, she has criticized her successor as competition minister for a ruling declaring that tech giant Apple owes Ireland €13 billion in unpaid taxes.

Kroes, 75, is currently a director or board member of several companies and serves as an advisor to Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Uber. She remains an influential member of the Netherlands’ ruling People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy.

Kroes rejected any criticism of her business activities. Her lawyer said she denied that “she was ever conflicted by ties to the private sector.”

The declarations to the European Union that omitted mention of Mint Holdings were “made in good faith” and “to the best of her knowledge,” Kroes’ lawyer said. “The assumption was that she was no longer a director after the company was no longer needed.”

“Mrs. Kroes will inform the President of the European Commission of this oversight and will take full responsibility for it,” Kroes’ lawyer said.

Badr-El-Din said “Mint Holdings was established as a special purpose vehicle to manage the acquisition of international energy assets, principally from Enron. That deal fell through in late summer of 2000.”

If the deal had gone through, said an attorney for Badr-El-Din, the company was to become “the world’s premier gas company, leading industry away from oil and coal” and reduce Europe’s dependency on Russia’s energy monopoly.

Badr-El-Din’s role in the proposed purchase of Enron’s global assets had been previously disclosed by The New York Times, but Kroes’ involvement in the potential deal apparently had never been reported.

Kroes continued being listed as a director of Mint Holdings until 2009 because the “lawyers involved did not carry out all the instructions and terminate Mrs Kroes’ directorship with Mint Holding,” Badr-El-Din said. “Once these clerical oversights came to light in 2009, they were corrected.”

The Switzerland of the West

The Bahamas is a constellation of 700 islands, many smaller than a square mile. It is one of a handful of micro nations south of the United States whose confidentiality laws and reluctance to share information with foreign governments gave rise to the term “Caribbean curtain.”

For nearly a century, the Bahamas has been on the radar of tax officials around the world.

The Bahamas’ capital, Nassau, is home to cruise ships, resorts and offshore service providers. Photo: ShutterstockIn the 1930s, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service investigated Americans who avoided taxes in Switzerland and the Bahamas, which once sold itself as the “Switzerland of the West.” The focus intensified in the 1960s when U.S. investigators noticed an uptick in the use of the Bahamas by organized crime bosses. U.S. bank assets in the Bahamas, meanwhile, ballooned eight times between 1973 and 1979. By the end of the 1970s, one study reported that the “flow of criminal and tax evasion money” into the Bahamas was $20 billion a year.

The Caribbean nation was not easy to penetrate.

To peek behind the curtain, a clandestine U.S. government project named “Operation Tradewinds” used IRS agents who paid an informant to enter the bedroom of a Bahamian banker visiting Miami and to remove his briefcase. At a nearby restaurant, another IRS informant provided the oblivious banker with “female entertainment.”

The briefcase held a goldmine of information from one Bahamian bank on 308 U.S. account holders, including mafia kingpins, celebrities and corporate moguls, who reportedly held as much as a quarter of a billion dollars.

Although the operation led to criminal prosecutions and $100 million in tax penalties, it was scrapped in 1975 after congressional outcry into the IRS’s use of informants. A U.S. court later declared the briefcase search “flagrantly illegal.”

In 2000, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the world’s leading tax policy forum, placed the Bahamas on a blacklist of countries that aid tax dodging. After the Bahamas hurriedly introduced nine new laws, the OECD removed it from the blacklist in 2001. In 2009, though, the OECD put the Bahamas on the organization’s “gray list,” a less severe categorization that nonetheless signified nonconformity with international standards.

The Bahamas is a staple of U.S. tax evasion investigations. Walter C. Anderson, a Washington, D.C., telecommunications executive who disguised his ownership of companies through shell entities in the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas, was sent to prison in 2007 for evading more than $200 million in income taxes. In 2007, billionaire real estate developer Igor Olenicoff pleaded guilty to a federal tax felony relating to misleading tax returns and the quiet transfer of $196 million into the Bahamas. Olenicoff, who chaired two Bahamian companies with bank accounts on the island, told Forbes earlier this year “that his offshore law firm of choice was in the Bahamas.”

Years later, the Bahamas emerged as a common thread in the U.S. Department of Justice’s crackdown on Swiss banking giant UBS. Between 2009 and 2014, the agency took criminal actions against U.S. citizens and residents with offshore dealings in the Bahamas, including a consultant from California, a steel executive from Illinois, a computer executive from Ohio, a Texan oil industry consultant, a Florida hotel developer and a New Mexico farmer.

In many cases, U.S. investigators struggled to know where to begin. Bahamian law requires the names of directors, who have complete power over offshore companies, to be filed with the national registrar. Yet the names are not always available online and directors’ names cannot be searched individually or without preexisting knowledge of the Bahamian company’s name. That makes it difficult to check whether a public official or a corporate executive is linked to companies chartered in the Bahamas.

In the new documents, for example, Exxon Azerbaijan Caspian Sea Limited, the energy giant’s company in the repressive yet oil-rich nation Azerbaijan lists no directors in the Bahamas registry. Yet there are 19 directors listed in the documents seen by ICIJ. The Bahamian company Equatorial Guinea LNG Holdings Limited shows no directors in the Bahamas’ public registry but, in filesreviewed by ICIJ, six well-connected Equatorial Guineans appear, including the First Lady’s brother and four current and former ministers of energy.

Jason Sharman, who co-authored a survey of information from 40 corporate registers around the world, said the names of offshore company directors are basic information that should be easily accessible to the public.

These days, the Bahamas, a one-hour plane ride from Miami to the capital, Nassau, claims to be cleaner than ever. Yet doubts persist.

“Bahamas has taken an attitude of selective noncompliance with its own laws, and it is now pushing out this message with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink.” – Nicholas Shaxson

In 2014, the most recent review of the Bahamas’ anti-money laundering systems by the OECD faulted the country on half of the core measures used to judge countries’ compliance with international standards. This included no requirement for banks or financial institutions to know the real identity of a company or trust owner. Although the OECD now considers the Bahamas compliant, in June 2015, the European Union listed the Bahamas and 30 other countries as uncooperative tax havens.

Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World, said the Bahamas is one of the handful of tax havens with a riskier and wilder reputation than bigger offshore jurisdictions such as Switzerland.

The Bahamas is “on a par with Panama in terms of its thirst for and tolerance of dirty money,” said Shaxson.

Recently, Shaxson said, as governments push tax havens to share banking and financial information with national tax agencies concerned about offshore evasion by citizens, the Bahamas has pushed back.

“They are saying ‘While everyone else is being transparent, your secrets are safe with us,’” said Shaxson. “Bahamas has also long taken an attitude of selective noncompliance with its own laws, and it is now pushing out this message with a nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”

Bahamian authorities told ICIJ that the country honors its international obligations and cooperates with international authorities. The Bahamas “does not tolerate dirty money,” authorities said, noting it “has in many areas been rated as ‘largely compliant’ with international standards.”

Authorities did not comment on specific cases and defended the Bahamian corporate registry. “Fees for online registry searches covers the cost and upgrading of the online system,” said authorities.

Regarding the sharing of tax information, authorities said: “The Bahamas negotiates in good faith with all appropriate partners of the Global Forum for transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes, subject to…international confidentiality and data security standards.”

Rulers, kleptocrats and yachts

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, right, with his son Marco Antonio. Photo: AP Photo / Martin ThomasBahamian companies, trusts and bank accounts have appeared in numerous cases involving the seizure of dictators’ and politicians’ money. The son of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet used a Bahamian company, Meritor Investments Limited, to move $1.3 million to his father. Pinochet’s son, Marco Antonio, dismissed the allegations as “lies” and declared no wrongdoing through the Bahamas. Pinochet himself owned another Bahamian company, Ashburton Company Limited, set up in 1996. Abba Abacha, the son of former Nigerian president, Sani Abacha, had $350 million frozen in Luxembourg and the Bahamas as part of a global asset hunt into the estimated $3 billion stripped from Nigeria during his father’s five-year rule.

Bahamian companies and bank accounts have also played key roles in graft schemes involving former politicians from Greece, Ukraine, Kuwait and Trinidad and Tobago and in illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government under the United Nations Oil-for-Food program.

The Bahamas was also linked to the dealings of five politicians and public officials revealed in the Panama Papers.

They include Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, Qatar’s former prime minister and foreign minister until 2013, who owned Trick One Limited, a Bahamas company. In January 2005, when foreign minister, Al Thani signed a loan agreement with a bank for $53 million. As collateral on the loan, Al Thani signed up the Al Marqab, a 133-meter, prize-winning yacht worth $300 million.

An attorney for Al Thani declined to comment.

Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, his father Francisco and brother Mariano, directed Fleg Trading Ltd, set up in the Bahamas in 1998 and dissolved 11 years later. Macri did not disclose his connection to Fleg Trading in asset declarations in 2007 and 2008 when he was mayor of Buenos Aires. Following the release of Panama Papers, an Argentine prosecutor sought information from authorities in Panama and the Bahamas as part of an investigation into whether Macri “maliciously” omitted his connections to the company.”

Macri’s spokesman told ICIJ that the Argentine president didn’t disclose Fleg Trading Ltd. because he held no financial interests or shares in the company.

The Bahamas was also where meetings and documents were held for Blairmore Holdings Inc., the investment fund directed by Ian Cameron, father of former British Prime Minister David Cameron. Ian Cameron died on Sept. 8, 2010. After the release of the Panama Papers, David Cameron was forced to admit that he financially benefited from the fund, which managed tens of millions of pounds on behalf of wealthy families. Through the offshore structure, incorporated in Panama but run from the Bahamas, the fund avoided paying tax in the United Kingdom.

Mossack Fonseca did not reply to ICIJ’s request for comment. The law firm previously told ICIJ: “As a registered agent we merely help incorporate companies, and before we agree to work with a client in any way, we conduct a thorough due-diligence process, one that in every case meets and quite often exceeds all relevant local rules, regulations and standards to which we and others are bound.”

Happy with status quo

Mossack Fonseca pushed the Bahamas’s confidentiality laws as a selling point and echoed the country’s own defense of the offshore industry in the face growing global calls for transparency.

In 2003, as the country recovered from its money-laundering blacklisting, a Mossack Fonseca employee met with a client to discuss the need for “an aggressive public relations campaign … to try to change the bad perception people have about the Bahamas when it comes to privacy.” Information was “not exchanged often or extensively,” the two reassured one another, according to internal notes from the Panama Papers.

In 2009, a Mossack Fonseca employee proposed transferring a U.S. customer’s assets to a trust in the Bahamas to ensure confidentiality during a bankruptcy. In 2014, Mossack Fonseca suggested to a New Zealand client that he use a Bahamas bank to obscure his ownership of a company. In 2015, a Spanish client used the Bahamas to bank half a million dollars she did not wish to declare back home. Another Spaniard used Mossack Fonseca’s in-house directors for a company to avoid listing his name in public registers.

Tax reform advocates have criticized tax havens, including the Bahamas, for trumpeting transparency while signing exchange agreements with other tax havens or with small countries unlikely to yield much information of use to poor, tax-starved governments. It signed one such agreement in 2010 with Greenland, which has a population of 57,000. A Mossack Fonseca employee and a Swiss client “joked” during a meeting in 2014 about a similar agreement between Greenland and another tax haven, Switzerland, according to internal meeting notes.

A brochure promoting the Bahamas financial services industry.Today, in advertising material, the Bahamas promotes a “unique approach” that purports to respect international rules yet protect its offshore clients. The Bahamas reassures potential investors that it will share tax information later than most other countries and, even then, only with selected governments that meet stringent technical and confidentiality requirements.

In line with this approach, the Bahamas has not signed the global treaty that helps countries share tax information. The OECD, the treaty’s governing body, calls it the “most powerful instrument against offshore tax evasion and avoidance.” In August, the number of participants hit 103, which includes tax havens and some of the world’s poorest countries.

The Bahamas argues that the cost and administrative burden of automatically exchanging tax details is too high and that client privacy could be jeopardized. The Bahamas claims it will instead uphold international rules through bilateral, or one-to-one, agreements.

“I am very doubtful that jurisdictions that seek to maintain bilateralism on this issue are serious about meeting their commitments even under bilateral agreements,” said Reuven Avi-Yonah, professor of tax law at the University of Michigan and former consultant for the United States and the OECD.

The multilateral convention “is the new global standard,” said Professor Avi-Yonah, “and jurisdictions that are serious about exchange of information sign on to it. I worry that money will flow to the bilateral jurisdictions and no information will be forthcoming.”

The Bahamas, however, has reason to be happy with the status quo. In 2016, the Bahamas expects to earn $17.7 million from offshore company fees.

Recently, when countries met to forge an agreement on swapping tax information between nations, organizers declared that soon tax cheats would have “nowhere left to hide.” The Bahamas’ minister of financial services struck another note with reporters, concluding: “We got everything we wanted.”

Received: from DNCDAG1.dnc.org ([fe80::f85f:3b98:e405:6ebe]) by
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14.03.0224.002; Tue, 17 May 2016 22:51:23 -0400
From: Maureen Garde <GardeM@dnc.org>
To: "Davis, Marilyn" <DavisM@dnc.org>
CC: "Alvillar, Raul" <alvillarr@dnc.org>, Pratt Wiley <WileyP@dnc.org>, Senior
Staff <SeniorStaff@dnc.org>, Donna Brazile <donna@brazileassociates.com>,
"Jefferson, Deshundra" <JeffersonD@dnc.org>, "Wilson, Erin"
<WilsonE@dnc.org>, "Wei, Shu-Yen" <WeiS@dnc.org>
Subject: Re: CT To Automatically Register 400,000 Voters
Thread-Topic: CT To Automatically Register 400,000 Voters
Thread-Index: AdGwfECrnHncqe6VT8qvbmDuC7/gMwADHiK/AAfR4hEAAgo0SQ==
Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 19:51:22 -0700
Message-ID: <113CDEC5-0957-4014-8F4B-6257D0283D48@dnc.org>
References:
<C911D41F43C29C4AB0429D99746ED17F6F5F0CF6@dncdag1.dnc.org>,<7D689DEF-F513-45AF-BD66-D563BEACD978@dnc.org>,<A1277FF2-9AFE-4154-BB3A-53629CBC81C2@dnc.org>
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How many more states can we get to follow Connecticut? Way to go!
On May 17, 2016, at 9:52 PM, "Davis, Marilyn" <DavisM@dnc.org> wrote:
Ditto!
Marilyn D. Davis
National Director of Community Engagement
Democratic National Convention
M: 609-218-3254
Twitter: @marilynddavis
Facebook.com/marilynddavis
Sent from my iPhone, please excuse any typos
On May 17, 2016, at 6:09 PM, Alvillar, Raul <alvillarr@dnc.org> wrote:
This is awesome!!
Sent from my iPhone
On May 17, 2016, at 1:39 PM, Pratt Wiley <WileyP@dnc.org> wrote:
Connecticut will become the 5th state to implement automatic voter registration (joining Oregon, California, Vermont, and West Virginia). Unlike the other states, Connecticut is implementing the law administratively rather than administratively.
BREAKING: Connecticut To Automatically Register 400,000 Voters
BY ALICE OLLSTEIN<image001.png> MAY 17, 2016 12:41 PM
On Tuesday, Connecticut became the fifth state in the nation to approve a system where residents are automatically registered to vote every time they visit a Department of Motor Vehicles, following the lead of Oregon, California, West Virginia, and Vermont. The state is the first, however, to implement the policy administratively rather than passing a bill through the legislature.
Secretary of the State Denise Merrill told ThinkProgress that an estimated 400,000 eligible voters will be added to the rolls.
“It shouldn’t be a big effort on anyone’s part to register to vote,” she said. “And once people take that first affirmative step of registering, it’s like their first act of citizenship. It makes them really go seek out info about elections and makes them much more likely to vote.”
The Secretary of State’s office and the Connecticut DMV hammered out a memorandum of understanding over the past few months to share data in order to register voters. While the automatic system is still in the works over the next two years, the Connecticut DMV will reach out more aggressively to voters and give them the option to register at all DMV offices, by mail, or on the DMV’s mobile app.
The majority of the automatically registered voters in Oregon are excluded from the state’s closed primary because they were designated as “unaffiliated” and did not take the extra step of mailing in a form to choose a party. Connecticut will avoid this problem by having the DMV collect data on party affiliation during the automatic registration process.
“The only limitation is that this only works for people with a drivers license or state ID,” Merrill said. “So there is still is group of people we’re not going to reach. Personally, I think that once you turn 18 and you’re a citizen you should automatically be a voter. But about 70 percent of population has some sort of license or ID from the DMV, so this moves us one step closer to covering everybody.”
The new automatic system may help the state shake off a a lawsuit the Justice Department authorized in April over the state’s “widespread noncompliance” with federal laws regarding voter registration. An investigation found that Connecticut DMVs were largely failing to offer voters a chance to register when they applied for drivers licenses or updated their addresses. Many offices were only offering this option if residents specifically requested it, though they are required by law to offer it to everyone.
Though the state began working on the automatic registration plan before the lawsuit was filed, Merrill told ThinkProgress: “We’re hoping it makes a difference and [the Justice Department] can see we’re making real progress.”
President Obama won Connecticut by fewer than 300,000 votes in 2012. If the state meets its goal in adding 400,000 new voters to the rolls over the next few years, those voters could easily sway a future election.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/05/17/3778976/connecticut-automatic-registration/
Pratt Norton Wiley
National Director of Voter Expansion
Democratic National Committee
w. 202-488-5029
m. 617-953-8579
wileyp@dnc.org
@prattwiley
http://www.democrats.org/voterexpansion
<image002.png>

From: "Parrish, Daniel" <ParrishD@dnc.org>
To: "White, Kristin" <WhiteK@dnc.org>, "Marquez, Karina" <MarquezK@dnc.org>
Subject: RE: Update: Upcoming events with the President, Convention
Thread-Topic: Update: Upcoming events with the President, Convention
Thread-Index:
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Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 11:38:38 -0700
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<0A13A267-F415-4F24-86B9-13FF4B5941AD@ypiusa.org>
<021301d1b068$8baa3490$a2fe9db0$@skyadvisorygroup.com>
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<023501d1b06a$95bd05f0$c13711d0$@skyadvisorygroup.com>
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Here is ours- but we’re technically holding at the moment because our host just started sending to his list. Does he need it today?
From: White, Kristin
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2016 2:36 PM
To: Marquez, Karina; Parrish, Daniel
Subject: FW: Update: Upcoming events with the President, Convention
Can you please send me the Miami and NYC invites in Word so I can make a link/invite for Dixon?
From: Lindsay W. Rachelefsky [mailto:lindsay@skyadvisorygroup.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2016 2:33 PM
To: 'Dixon Slingerland'
Cc: White, Kristin
Subject: RE: Update: Upcoming events with the President, Convention
Thank you!! Kristin can you please send to Dixon?
From: Dixon Slingerland [mailto:dslingerland@ypiusa.org]
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2016 11:32 AM
To: Lindsay W. Rachelefsky
Cc: White, Kristin
Subject: Re: Update: Upcoming events with the President, Convention
I can send personalized links to my Miami and NYC lists if you want
Sent from my iPhone
On May 17, 2016, at 11:18 AM, Lindsay W. Rachelefsky <lindsay@skyadvisorygroup.com> wrote:
Zach Allen is in touch with her so yes!
From: Dixon Slingerland [mailto:dslingerland@ypiusa.org]
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2016 11:07 AM
To: White, Kristin
Cc: Lindsay Rachelefsky
Subject: Re: Update: Upcoming events with the President, Convention
Did you already hook Maura Mandt in for NYC? Remember she committed big money as part of last LA event but wanted to attend/host in NY
Sent from my iPhone
On May 17, 2016, at 8:23 AM, White, Kristin <WhiteK@dnc.org> wrote:
Friends,
There are several exciting events next month with President Obama, and we wanted to be sure and include you. If you have friends that would be interested in attending either of the below events, please forward these invitations to them! As we head into our Convention and the last year of President Obama’s administration, we want to be sure folks have every opportunity to support the President.
June 3rd – Dinner with the President in Miami, FL
June 8th – Dinner with the President in New York, NY
In addition, we are quickly approaching our 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia from July 25-28! As the presidential primary unfolds, the DNC’s services and tools will provide the eventual Democratic nominee (and candidates up and down the ticket) with significant tactical advantages. Thank you for all you have done to ensure we are in this position of strength! We have several Convention packages available to ensure you have the access to credentials, tickets, briefings and events throughout the Convention. We are less than 70 days away from Convention, and I want to be sure you will be with us in Philly – take a look at the packages and let me know which is best for you!
As always, thank you for your support and commitment to our Party!
Warmly,
Lindsay and Kristin
Lindsay Rachelefsky
Sky Advisory Group
Email: Lindsay@skyadvisorygroup.com
Phone: (310) 497-5573
Kristin White
Democratic National Committee, Deputy Southern California Director
Email: WhiteK@DNC.org
Phone: (202) 863-8056
<June 3rd - POTUS in Miami.pdf>
<June 8th - POTUS in New York.pdf>
<2016 Convention Packages - Individual.pdf>

Like this:

A little over 40 years ago, Marie-Hélène de Rothschild held a party at her family’s massive castle-like mansion called Château de Ferrières. This party showcased surrealist costumes that are both intriguing and bizarre, even today. These photos have somehow leaked to the internet, despite the gatherings being held in secret. When you see these photos, you won’t believe what really went on behind closed doors.
The mansion was surrounded by lights that would give off the impression that it was on fire.

A little over 40 years ago, Marie-Hélène de Rothschild held a party at her family’s massive castle-like mansion called Château de Ferrières. This party showcased surrealist costumes that are both intriguing and bizarre, even today. These photos have somehow leaked to the internet, despite the gatherings being held in secret. When you see these photos, you won’t believe what really went on behind closed doors.
The mansion was surrounded by lights that would give off the impression that it was on fire.
Invitations couldn’t be read unless held in front of a mirror.

The party’s hosts were Guy de Rothschild & Marie-Hélène de Rothschild. As you can see, Marie-Hélène’s costume consists of a giant head with diamond tears.

And here she is pictured with Baron Alexis de Redé.

The Baron’s mask consisted of multiple faces, to give off the idea that he could stare at any and everyone, no matter where they were in the room.

Here is the hostess without her mask.

This guest paid homage to “The Son Of Man” painting with her costume.

Here you can see Mrs. Espírito Santo dining with the Baron.

Not only did people don bizarre masks, but birdcages were a common headdress.
Amongst guests, were Salvador Dali, who poses in front of his painting here.
There wasn’t one guest who didn’t rise to the challenge or incorporating both the beautiful and the strange.

As if the costumes weren’t creepy enough, dinner was even more terrifying.

The tables were decorated with beautiful flowers, but also sprinkled with dismembered doll.
It’s creepy that this took place in 1972. One can only imagine what the parties have become now…

Like this:

The news that the U.S. government has been recording data from phone calls and Internet activity, broken by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, is just the latest in a long line of legendary leaks. Here are some of the most notorious leaks in U.S. history.

The Pentagon Papers

What may be the most famous leak in U.S. history occurred in June 1971, when The New York Times published sections of a top-secret Department of Defense report on the country’s involvement in Vietnam from 1945-1967. Dubbed the “Pentagon Papers,” the report detailed how the Johnson administration and others repeatedly misled Congress and the public about the causes and progress of the Vietnam War, according to the History Channel. [7 Great Dramas in Congressional HistoryThe report was leaked by antiwar activist Daniel Ellsberg,

a former Defense Department analyst working for the RAND Corp., who stole it from the Pentagon and sent copies to the Times. The Pentagon Papers’ publication fueled the antiwar movement and sparked a debate over the freedom of the press to divulge “classified” information and the public’s right to know about government affairs. President Richard Nixon tried but failed to get the Supreme Court to prevent further publication of the papers.

The Watergate Scandal

One of the best-known leaks, of course, is the Watergate scandal of Richard Nixon’s presidency. On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel complex in Washington, D.C., and installing illegal wiretaps. The men were linked to a fundraising group for Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, but the Nixon administration denied any involvement.

Later in 1972, Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward exposed the administration’s role in the scandal and cover-up. Their key source was an informant nicknamed “Deep Throat,” who was later revealed to be former FBI agent W. Mark Felt. A series of Senate hearings nailed the lid on Nixon’s coffin, and he resigned from the presidency in 1974 — the first president to do so. [The 10 Weirdest Presidential Inaugurations in US History]

The Iraq War Logs (WikiLeaks)

The so-called “Iraq War Logs” were just one of many leaks made by the non-profit organization WikiLeaks, founded by Australian journalist and activist Julian Paul Assange. The organization publishes secret or classified information or news from anonymous sources. In October 2010, WikiLeaks published Army field reports from 2004 to 2009 that listed the number of civilian deaths as 66,081 out of 109,000 total recorded deaths. The leaked logs confirmed some partially reported events. For instance, some American troops had been classifying civilian deaths as enemy deaths. The Iraq War Logs represent the largest leak in U.S. history.

The Plame Affair

In 2003, a case of leaked identity ended the career of a CIA agent. On July 6, 2003, The New York Times published an Op-Ed by former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, which questioned the reasons given by President George W. Bush’s administration for invading Iraq earlier in 2003. Wilson, who had been a CIA envoy to Niger in 2002, said Bush’s claim that Iraq had attempted to buy enriched uranium yellowcake — a step toward enriched uranium but not weapons-grade yet — from Niger was unsubstantiated. In response, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak wrote a column on July 14, 2003 criticizing Wilson and referring to Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as an “agency operative” — blowing her cover. Wilson accused the White House of leaking Plame’s identity as retribution for his Op-Ed, prompting an investigation. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald interviewed Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials and journalists. New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who conducted interviews in the leak but had never written an article about it, refused to testify and was held in contemp. She served time at a federal detention center, but was released after three months when Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, signed a waiver granting Miller permission to speak.

In 2007, Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements to government investigators. Libby was sentenced to prison, but Bush later reduced his sentence.

Climategate

Named in the Watergate tradition, “Climategate” refers to a controversy in the fall of 2009 in which hackers leaked thousands of emails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. The documents appeared to show scientists suppressing the publication of research undermining the existence of global warming. Even though an investigation later revealed no foul play was afoot, the leak added fuel to the global warming debate. Climate change critics claimed the leaked emails showed that global warming was a conspiracy among scientists, while the CRU said the emails were taken out of context.

The documents were leaked just weeks before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. In response, the scientific community released statements affirming the consensus that the planet’s average surface temperature is rising as a result of human activities.

Operation Mincemeat

Not all leaks are about exposing the truth — some are about deception. Such was the case with Operation Mincemeat, a leak planned and executed by the Allies during World War II. The plan, part of the larger Operation Barclay, was intended to make the Germans think the Allies were planning to invade Greece and Sardinia instead of Sicily. The Allies put fake “top secret” invasion plans on a dead body that was left to wash up on a beach in Spain. The plan worked: The Germans found the body and copied the fake plans. The trickery made the Germans suspicious, so they ignored other real intelligence leaks, thinking they were ruses.

Edward Snowden and the PRISM leak

On June 6, 2013, The Guardian broke the news that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting the phone records of millions of customers of Verizon, the U.S. telecom provider, as authorized by a top-secret court order issued in April. Technical contractor and former CIA employee Edward Snowden leaked classified details of a top-secret NSA electronic surveillance program, codenamed PRISM, to The Washington Post and The Guardian.

Via this program, the NSA can obtain information such as email, voice and video chat, other videos, photos, and social networking details, according to The Guardian. The NSA and FBI are obtaining data from the central servers of nine major Internet companies, including Google, Facebook and Apple, The Washington Post reported. The leak has launched criticism of President Barack Obama’s administration over breach-of-privacy concerns. The president has defended the surveillance program, claiming it has helped prevent terrorist attacks. The controversy continues, as more details of the surveillance programs are unveiled.